


magpies

by winchilsea



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Tanabata, pre ep. 5, umbrella sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 15:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9392441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchilsea/pseuds/winchilsea
Summary: Viktor can be brave for Yuuri, he can be so many things, he can be anything, and all Yuuri wants him to be is himself, what does that evenmean.(It rains during Tanabata.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RC_McLachlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan/gifts).



> [15\. Please, let's go home.](http://winchilsea.tumblr.com/post/155789513867/30-multipurpose-prompts-open-to-interpretation)

The rain comes just before the sun sets, and a slow wave of dismayed murmurs rolls down the street. Viktor holds out his hand, but it’s nothing more than slight mist. It doesn’t explain why one little girl bursts into tears, quickly followed by four small children in proximity to her.

Viktor turns to Yuuri, bewildered, but like the children, Yuuri wears grief on his face.

“It’s just rain,” Viktor says, desperate to keep hold of the festival’s excitement.

The look Yuuri gives him—distant, like they’re standing on opposite sides of a swift river—makes Viktor want to grieve too, but then Yuuri blinks and says, “Let’s go get food.”

There are colorful streamers hanging from the ceiling of the shopping arcade, pink and green and blue, so long that Viktor can reach up and have them brush against his fingertips. They move at the pace of the crowd, and Viktor keeps looking up to see the paper cranes, the paper slips the same colors as the streamers, the fish netting. At the center point, a richly patterned kimono hangs with its sleeves straightened out, and Viktor has a brief, indecent flash of Yuuri wearing it, the fabric slipping over his skin.

Viktor doesn’t even know what this festival is for—it’s probably blasphemous for him to linger on the image.

At the end of the arcade, the crowd spills out into a line of stalls, a red river in the night. The rain is still falling like gentle sighs, and Viktor catches Yuuri giving the sky a worried glance.

“It’s fine,” Viktor says, taking charge of their adventure, pushing toward the closest food stall he sees, “we can buy an umbrella.”

They’re not too close to the Japan Open that Yuuri can’t afford to indulge, but he only takes small bites of Viktor’s food. Viktor feeds him a twirl of yakisoba, a single takoyaki, the tail end of taiyaki, to which Yuuri gave him a half-hearted glare. He blows on the hot food first, of course, and then holds them patiently in from of Yuuri until he opens his mouth. Once, Viktor blows on grilled squid for himself and catches Yuuri absentmindedly opening his mouth, ready.

“ _Yuuri_ ,” Viktor says, a hint of salaciousness in his voice, and feeds him anyway, even when Yuuri tries to turn around, cheeks aflame.

He picks up hot cups of sake, handing over yen with little care, and downs the tiny things in one go. It goes quickly, sometimes already over by the time Yuuri turns around, and maybe that’s why Viktor gets away with drinking as many as he does. It’s fun, and festive, and Viktor hasn’t had to think about restraint and moderation in months. He thinks he might have forgotten how. There’s no coach, no Yakov, in Hasetsu to remind him.

It doesn’t stop Yuuri from wrinkling his nose and saying, “You smell like sake.”

Viktor smiles pleasantly, tipping his cup toward Yuuri. “Have some.” Frowning, Yuuri takes a small, dutiful sip before stepping back.

The night is balmy and damp with rain. There’s a sweet-smokey scent hanging in the air, like city fog or a bonfire. Sometimes when the lanterns catch just right, Yuuri looks like he’s glowing. 

“This festival,” Viktor says, watching the couples that walk hand in hand, faces so close that their noses touch, “what is it for?”

“Tanabata,” Yuuri says. “For”—he hesitates, licking his bottom lip—“the stars.”

But when Viktor tilts his head up, there are no stars in the sky.

The rain.

“Is that why you were sad?” Viktor asks. He’ll buy Yuuri a star if that means he won’t be sad. He’ll buy him ten, a hundred, a thousand stars, enough to fill the skies in every city they go to. “I wish you were never sad,” Viktor says, sighing a little too wistfully.

“You’ve had too much to drink,” Yuuri chides.

Viktor’s arms hang at his sides. He doesn’t know what to do with them, or himself, or with Yuuri. He doesn’t know what to do with Yuuri.

Yuuri, who paused in the middle of training, and said while fiddling with his water bottle, “There’s going to be a festival tonight. Do you want to go?” Yuuri, who looked up through his dark lashes, the beginnings of a blush high on his cheeks. Yuuri, _who just asked him out_.

Like on a date, Viktor thought. Alight with the idea, he agreed immediately and spent all day thinking about it: Yuuri in a yukata, Yuuri under the lantern light, Yuuri laughing and dancing and joyous. 

Reality rarely aligns with daydreams, but Viktor would rather the reality of Yuuri. Always, always. Even when he doesn’t know what to do with it, even when it is determined to rebuff and confuse him at every step.

“Let’s go to the shrine,” Yuuri says, moving away, the crowd parting and closing around him, “before the rain gets any worse.

Viktor wants to stop at the game stalls, toss rings or throw darts and win Yuuri a prize, present it to him as a courting gift, the way he’s seen in the movies, on TV, in those dramas that play in the dining room at Yu-topia where the girls throw themselves at the boys in surprised delight. If Yuuri won’t sleep with him, then maybe he’ll sleep with the toy and think of Viktor.

But Yuuri’s already threading through the crowd, so Viktor follows. 

The stalls line up all the way to the shrine, crowded together on the streets and making the city so unrecognizable Viktor wonders if it’s all a dream. If he’ll wake up tomorrow and there will be nothing left except a hangover. Newly bought umbrellas swing from their wrists, novelty items meant for children with cartoon crows printed on them.

“Magpies,” Yuuri corrects.

They walk close enough that the back of their hands brush, and when from the distance they can see the white gate of the shrine rising above the crowd, Yuuri says, “I used to cry when it rained on Tanabata.”

Thinking of the little girl with flowers in her hair, face scrunched up from the force of her tears, Viktor can easily imagine it. Hiroko showed him photo albums—Viktor knows all too well what Yuuri looks like at every age. “Really?” he asks anyway. _Tell me more. Tell me everything about you._

“Rain meant the magpies couldn’t come to build a bridge.”

Viktor turns to Yuuri, confused, wondering if the sake has loosed his grasp on English, but Yuuri picks up the speed, saying, “Oh, we’re here.” He follows Yuuri up the stone steps, helpless to do anything else.

There are people climbing down, hands pressed to their mouths in laughter. It’s lively and bright, and Viktor has to stop, has to hold his breath and swallow down that strange thing that keeps trying to claw its way up his throat—but then he looks up, sees Yuuri, and forgets what he was thinking about.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says a little plaintively, taking the steps two at a time to catch up to him at the landing. 

Yuuri gives him a startled-sheepish look over his shoulder, apologizing, but he still darts off without waiting, scurrying across the courtyard.

Even the shrine looks different, another dreamy layer added with the colorful streamers and lights flooding the trees laden with strips of paper. It silhouettes Yuuri when he turns around, and Viktor hopes that if nothing else he’ll remember this sight in the morning.

“Viktor?” A pale green strip of paper is held in front of his face. “Write down a wish.”

A wish. Viktor breathes out, thinking of all the things he wants. Things he’s never wanted before Yuuri, things he’s always wanted even while not allowing himself to want. There are droplets of water on Yuuri’s glasses, like glass beads, like diamonds. Viktor gets the urge to lick them off. He doesn’t.

It’s not that he never strayed from skating. Viktor was young once, angry and frustrated before he was tired. He used to know how to scream and shout and rage, how to turn on a dime and make impulse decisions that he’d regret at 3 a.m. in the morning, hands shaking with adrenaline and fear, how to smile without calculating it first.

So it’s not that he never strayed from skating, it’s that he strayed from everything else long enough and far enough that they turned into blurry, indistinct shapes on the horizon line—or they would be, if he ever dared to look behind him. With Yuuri, these things come forward unbidden, and Viktor doesn’t need to turn around; everything he wants is in front of him.

Viktor ties his wish right next to Yuuri’s, one more added to the hundreds already there, flimsy from the misty rain. Wishes with drawings, wishes in clumsy children’s handwriting, wishes that are small and cramped but still spill to the other side of the paper, wishes that are single words. Yuuri’s wish is two lines long. Viktor’s wish, written sideways in Cyrillic, stands out.

“What did you wish for?” Viktor asks, mindful of the space dividing them, unbridged. 

The smile Yuuri gives him, shy with a touch of something in the way his bottom lip curls, gives up nothing.

“I wished,” Viktor begins lightly, counting to keep his breaths measured, because he can be brave for Yuuri, he can be so many things, he can be anything, and all Yuuri wants him to be is himself, what does that even _mean_ , “that you could see the stars tonight.” _Give me the stars_ , Viktor’s wish reads. _Give me the stars, and teach me how to make him happy._

Yuuri’s eyes cut to the pastel green paper like he might be able to discern truth from lie in an alphabet he doesn’t know how to read. 

“The story,” Yuuri begins, eyes fixed on Viktor’s wish, “behind Tanabata is about two lovers.” An eternity passes as Yuuri drags his gaze from the tree to Viktor. “They could only meet once a year, but a river divided them.” 

The first fat drop of rain lands on his lip. One, two, and then suddenly the sky opens up. Within seconds, Viktor is soaked to his skin, the summer rain almost warm. 

Yuuri startles, fumbling for the umbrella hanging from his wrist. It opens with a flutter, briefly obscuring Yuuri from view. 

“The magpies,” Viktor says in realization. “The lovers couldn’t meet when it rained because the magpies—the bridge.” It’s so easy to imagine Yuuri, smaller and rounder and softer, heartbroken over a love story. Viktor thinks he would have cried himself, at least in the years before he gave himself over to the ice, at the thought of the lovers waiting a year in anticipation, in anguish, only to be stranded on either side of a divide—unbridged, uncrossable.

Yuuri’s umbrella, with its cartoon magpies, dips once in a nod. Rain sluices off it, curtaining him. 

_I can be brave for you_ , Viktor thinks, touching a finger to the metal tip of a spoke. He sees Yuuri’s hands clench around the handle, but the umbrella lifts with the lightest suggestion upward. 

Under the umbrella, Yuuri looks up. His eyelashes are very dark and beautiful. His eyebrows too. Carefully, with great attention to precision, Viktor presses his thumbs to the center of Yuuri’s forehead and strokes outward, tracing them.

“Um, Viktor?”

“You didn’t answer my question.” So dark and so lovely, lovely like the rest of Yuuri. Viktor sighs. So, so lovely.

“Question?” Yuuri repeats, slightly breathless. 

“Your wish,” Viktor says, rainwater in his mouth. “What was it?”

“I wished”—one hand grips Viktor’s wrist—“for the same thing as always.”

He’s so hesitant, mouth opening and closing with the words he can’t yet part with, but Viktor will wait. Just as he’s been waiting for Yuuri, all this time, like a stray dog wanting to be let in. Waiting, waiting. Until the stars burn out.

Viktor can tell when Yuuri’s ready because his grip on Viktor’s wrist tightens.

“To skate on the same ice as Viktor,” Yuuri says, defiant and brave. “That’s what I wished for.”

There’s an implied _forever_ , there must be, why else does Viktor’s heart start racing, why else does something rise in him, unnamable and unfamiliar and so, so welcomed. 

“Yuuri—”

“You’re going to catch a cold,” Yuuri cuts in, bringing the umbrella over them both. It’s too small, meant for children, and doesn’t fully shelter them.

They bought two umbrellas earlier, and Viktor’s is still hanging from his wrist, but Yuuri says nothing as Viktor takes hold of his umbrella, drawing him into a one-armed hug. The rain drums down above them.

“If I do, you can nurse me back to health,” Viktor murmurs, voice pitched low, earning the red-hot flush of Yuuri’s ear against his cheek.

After a moment, Yuuri’s arms come up to wrap around him. “Stupid Viktor,” he mumbles, “what am I supposed to do with a sick coach so close to the qualifiers?”

Sighing happily through a mouthful of Yuuri’s hair, Viktor says, “Be nicer to me.”

They don’t move, crystallized in this moment: rain and lights and music, laughter in the distance, a shared warmth.

_Finally_ , Viktor thinks, breathing in the rain-damp smell of Yuuri’s hair. They’d been so tense, both of them, repelled by misaligned fears and wants when all along it was this easy. Reach out. Bridge the space. Come home.

**Author's Note:**

> this is how you write fluff right???
> 
> (come say hi on [tumblr](http://winchilsea.tumblr.com)!)


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